Writing in today's Globe and Mail, the philosopher Mark Kingwell talked about the idea of the "bad improvement," which he says Germans refer to as Schlimmbesserung:

What is a bad improvement? It is a new version of an old thing that, in pursuit of upgrade, eliminates some essential appeal of the original. Some examples: the automatic transmission, polyester shirts, artificial football turf, the luxury VW Beetle, oversized tennis racquets, the aluminum baseball bat, possibly the designated-hitter rule. (Claims of bad improvement are bound to be controversial. In writer Damon Runyan's "Ten Stages of Drunkenness," stage four is "against the designated hitter." Stage seven is "for the designated hitter.")

I love the idea and I love the oh-so-useful word Schlimmbesserung. It reminds me of the electric-can-opener question, which I defined on Word Spy as "the recognition that some older, low-tech products are superior to the newer, high-tech products that are supposed to replace them." The model for this phrase is, of course, the electric can opener, which most people consider to be markedly inferior to the cheaper and easier-to-use manual can opener.